The American Dream is Not Dead

Aug 29, 2013

RUSH: Folks, I have to tell you something. You look out over America today, and there is discontent everywhere. There is a malaise. This massive depression, this fog has just settled over the country. I mean, even yesterday at that Martin Luther King rally, they were expecting 100,000, and barely 20,000 showed up.

The most noteworthy thing that happened yesterday was Bill Clinton taking a huge swipe at Obama. The media today is out there saying, “No, no, no! Clinton didn’t take a swipe at Obama.” You know what Clinton said? He said, “Martin Luther King didn’t die…” I’m paraphrasing; I don’t have it right in front of me. He said, “Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t die so that his heirs could complain about gridlock in Washington.”

Who is complaining about gridlock in Washington? That’d be Obama. Who is he blaming for it? Me! I mean, the Republicans won’t go along with him, the Republicans won’t talk to him, the Republicans won’t agree with him — and it’s because of me, he says. They’re afraid of me! Clinton is saying Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t die so that his heirs could complain about Washington gridlock. Who’s complaining about gridlock?

It was obviously at slap at Obama, and so the media is petrified, and they’re out there, “No, no, no! That’s not at all what happened.” I have the sound bites coming up, and you’ll be able to hear. Well, I know Clinton blamed me for the same thing. They all blame me. But Clinton hasn’t been talking about “gridlock” for the past two weeks; Obama has, or for the past five years; Obama has. Clinton’s not gonna go up there and take a swipe at himself.

So who was he taking a swipe at?

It had to be Obama.

Obama didn’t even know it, he was so self absorbed by what he was gonna say. You know what? Snerdley told me, “You know, the best thing you can do is don’t even talk about that event yesterday. Just ignore it,” and I fully intended to, but there are some things I just can’t ignore. Here’s the main thing. I think if you want to sum up what’s really wrong about all this, Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights coalition of his era was about one thing, and that was integration.

Martin Luther King Jr. was interesting. If you read a lot of what he said or wrote, Martin Luther King did not blame the Constitution. Martin Luther King acknowledged that the Constitution did indeed spell out the right thing for all people. He said that it was just not properly applied at first, but eventually it was and has been. He did not rip the Constitution. He did not think the founding of the country or immoral or unjust.

He thought the implementation, in the early days, was flawed. It’s real simple. The 13 original colonies, in order to rebel, in order to form a union, had to accommodate the southern colonies. In some of them, slavery was the thing for them, and they weren’t gonna give it up. A number of the Founders knew it. Jefferson, Adams, they all wrote, “This is gonna lead to trouble down the road,” but they had to talk about compromise.

They had to make compromise, accommodation, in order to found the country. Martin Luther King knew all of this, and he said that the founding was proper and actually a blessing, just improperly applied. He was about integration, not separatism, and not segregation. But that’s what was on stage yesterday. Everything about the civil rights movement today is back to segregation. We gone back to pre-Martin Luther King days, essentially. It’s about a never-ending race battle.

It’s about segregation.

It’s about never wanting to be integrated and then after the integration has taken place, then segregate. It’s a bastardization of what he stood for. I don’t think there’s any question about it. But regardless, I was driving home yesterday, and I listened to Obama’s speech on the radio, and I know that people don’t attach much credibility to me when I’m commenting on Obama because they think my criticism is only political.

That’s not true. It’s based entirely on substance. I just have to tell you: Based on the expectations of what I know people were expecting, that speech yesterday was a disaster. I mean, it was a disappointment. The media is all talking about seminal moment, greatest speech. But I was literally bored driving home, listening to it. Anyway, that’s just a brief aside. We’ve got discontent. We had 100,000 people expected; barely 20,000 showed up.

African-Americans in this country are fed up.

White people are fed up and depressed.

Hispanics are confused.

And Obama the Magnificent, who criticized Bush for not having a coalition in Iraq, seems ready to go help Al-Qaeda in Syria, but not too much. We’re gonna do a limited strike just to show that you can’t cross Obama’s red line, but beyond that we’re not gonna do much. The American people are ticked off. There’s high unemployment. There are high oil prices, stagnant wages, growing debt. Obama lives in a vacuum in Washington and Martha’s Vineyard. He’s living the life of Riley!

A lot of people are ticked off, but not enough of them are mad at Obama and the government. The sad thing is that so many people, particularly young people, are losing faith in America, the American dream. There is no America if there’s no American dream, and a lot of young people don’t think the American dream is possible. They’re losing faith in it — and there’s nothing wrong with America except who’s running it right now.

America is, as we speak, is the product of policies, not the product of evolution. We’re not trending downward simply because what came before us was a mirage. America’s greatness was not an accident. America’s greatness was not a coincidence. America’s greatness was not luck. It was the result of a blessing and genuine substance. And it is not in decline because of evolution. It’s not in decline because no nation can remain at the top forever.

The ingredients are all there for the United States to remain on top for as long as we want to. But when you have leaders who have never believed in the goodness and the greatness of this country and its founding; when you have people who think that America is the problem in the world, not solution; when you have people who think the American military is the focus of evil and not the solution; when you have people who think…

Do you know what Obama said yesterday?

He actually said that one of the great things about this country is “ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” and then he said, “The sad fact is, there aren’t many examples of that.” There aren’t many examples of that? There are examples of it every day, “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” The first person I ever heard use that phrase was Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, and I immediately stole it and appropriated it as my own.

Only occasionally do I credit Senator Graham, as I am doing now. I don’t think Obama’s ever used it prior to yesterday. But even when he used it, he didn’t believe it in. He said, “There are no instances of maids becoming billionaires.” I’m paraphrasing. He used maids, housekeepers, these kinds of jobs that he’s always associated with slavery, if I may be honest. Nobody has ever risen up or very few have ever risen up from those jobs.

And that’s a crock!

That’s what, I mean, when I say that we have people who do not understand this country, don’t believe in it. They have been taught a totally erroneous version of this country. So now we’ve got a president who’s a steward of decline, because he thinks it has to happen, because he said and others in his party have said that America’s greatness in the past was just a coincidence. We had the story.

Speaking of Obama and no maid has ever made anything of herself, no street sweeper has ever made anything of himself, may I remind you of the Martin Luther King speech to the junior high school in 1967 that we played yesterday? In fact, Mike, grab that again and have it handy. I know you’ve got it there. This is the speech where King said, “If your lot is life is to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper there’s ever been.”

There was no dishonor in work, in his world. There was no job that was beneath any individual. It’s such a stark contrast. But we have leaders who believe this country was unjust from its early days, immoral from its early days, undeserving of superpower status. We have leaders who believe that we have a country that needs to be shown what it’s like the way the rest of the people in this world live.

The rest of the people in this world live substandard lives because the United States has existed and stolen everything from ’em, and I am not exaggerating when I say that that is the kind of thing that informs radical leftists today. It’s what they’re taught. If their parents are radical leftists, it’s what they grow up hearing at home; then when get to school, they hear the same thing.

And they get into adulthood and they believe all this stuff. And then they end up thinking they’re the smartest people in the world for realizing it. There’s virtue, in fact, attached to not thinking of America as great. That’s real honesty. That’s real virtue. So we have a situation where the country is in decline, people losing faith in America, which is a crying shame because the American dream need not die and there’s no reason — other than these policies that we’re being governed by — for this situation to be.

KING: What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends: Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures! Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well!” If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the rill. Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. It isn’t by size that you win or you fail; be the best at whatever that you are!

RUSH: Sounds to me like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King believed in the American dream in 1966, ’67. It sounds to me like he believed in the American dream.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There is nothing wrong with this country that a change in leadership would not cure. I’m gonna tell you: The time, right now, is ripe for anybody who doesn’t like what’s going on to stand up — and I’m talking about in electoral politics leadership. The time is right for anybody who wants to stand up, make the case for the American dream, and do a Norman Vincent Peale on everybody. The American people are thirsting for it, they’re hungering for it, they want to hear that the American dream is not dead!

They don’t want to live in a nation in decline, they don’t want to have lost faith in their country, and it’s not necessary that they have lost faith in their country. Being purely political, what they need to lose faith in is the policies of the Democrat Party and radical liberalism. It’s no more complicated than that. It’s easy to say; it’s tough to change people’s minds.